Review of Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters

Book Review

Translation and Contemporary Art: Transdisciplinary Encounters, written by MªCarmen África Vidal Claramonte, New York, Routledge, 2022, 126 pp., $47.96 (hardback), ISBN: 9781032211657

As a well-established field, Translation Studies (TS) has acquired significance since the late twentieth century, with a proliferation of TS journals, conferences, and books over the last three decades. The result of such expansion is diversification, leading to multiple interpretations of the term “translation studies.” Since the cultural turn in TS was proposed in 1990, the notion of what translation involves has been expanded. An increasing number of translation researchers are inviting us to expand the object of the field (Blumczynski, 2016; Brodzki, 2007; Gentzler, 2016). Many scholars view translation as transdisciplinary and open-ended, rejecting the detrimentally narrow definitions of translation and the idea that translation is binary (Gentzler, 2016, p. 5). The book reviewed makes a great contribution to that cross-boundary process. The author’s research interests lie in contemporary art, the way people look at images, and the way to observe the world through images. She argues that the connotation of translation should be widened and that translation is happening through semiotic repertoires because we are living in an area where the Internet, machines and multimedia are essential to our lives. What we have been witnessing since the beginning of the twenty-first century is a dramatic change of perception from verbal literacy to multifaceted literacy. Such a multifaceted landscape raises new questions for translation. Hence, the old disciplinary boundaries created in the last two centuries do not fit with the status quo. The key terms for TS now are interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity. With that in mind, translation will inevitably move forward, both as a means of enriching itself and as a means of increasing dialogue with other fields. We are faced with new contexts, and “we need new rules” (Claramonte, 2022, p. 24), which means understanding the translation process and the multifaceted nature of the world. Therefore, the goal of the book is to examine the similarities and links between translation and modern art and to demonstrate how translation is viewed and used in modern art.

The book represents the most recent discovery in cross-boundary translation studies. It is organized into three sections, namely “Translating in a Visual Age: Transdisciplinary Routes,” “The Artistranslator’s Gaze,” and “Translating With Art”.

The first part introduces transdisciplinary routes, claiming that the multimodal environment cannot be successfully approached within a single disciplinary paradigm.

The author’s starting point is the assertion that people translate not just with their eyes but with the other senses and the “outward shift in translation studies” (Bassnett & Johnston, 2019). The new texts, which include videogames, websites, album covers, visuals, icons, tweets, graphic novels, and dance performances, necessitate the development of new composite and heterotypical translation techniques across many media. Thus, developing the area of TS is crucial since new translation techniques are required for stories that are delivered in unconventional ways. In order to be truly multidisciplinary, the discipline of translation studies must emerge and incorporate other branches of knowledge and research techniques. The author believes that to translate is to interpret. Every action we take is a translation, and the translations of others speak volumes about ourselves. Therefore, translation should be defined from the visible dimension, that is, look to translation and translate to look at the world (Claramonte, 2022, p. 25). This requires contemplating how images function. Images are visible ways of thinking, feeling, and looking at the world. They also speak to translate different realities. In order to deconstruct the masculine gaze, Cindy Sherman, for instance, post-translates by employing her own body as a text that rewrites other bodies (Mulvey, 1991; Solomon-Godeau & Nochlin, 1991).